10.2.02 - Say hello to your new best friends: Raleigh's
baamphf. Saw them at Kings Sunday night and, as usual, was laughing
as I got blown away by the aggressively
smart, tight music they make. Keep an eye out - two drummers, two guitarists
and one bassist, all of whom obviously enjoy tearing the hell out of their constantly-changing
songs. I'd call it math-rock, but Susan Humphreys (screaming above) would probably
punch me, so we'll just mention they invoke Shellac, Don
Caballero, shrieking metal, intricate jazz and the Melvins at various times
and leave it at that. Ladderback
were great, too. They're from Raleigh, work a similar sound and are apparently
scheduled for a tour of Japan soon.(beware,
the mp3s at the baamphf site occasionally hung up my browser, not sure if it's
me or them) [link]

*****

10.2.02
- I haven't looked forward to a music show as much as this in a long
time. Greensboro's avant-garde jazz/country/noise
genius Eugene Chadbourne
(is it fair to call him the most well-known free jazz musician
the state has produced since Coltrane?) is playing in an improv duo with Gerry
Hemingway, the former drummer in Anthony Braxton's most brilliant quartet,
at Go! Studios in Carrboro tonight. Yeah, I'm gonna miss that. I previewed
this show - a spillover from the ArtsIgnite
festival currently underway in Winston-Salem - in last week's Indy.
This provided me the smile-inducing benefit of hearing "Hi, this is Eugene
Chadbourne" on my answering machine one night. You can imagine the thrill.
Local quirk-rockers Cantwell, Gomez, Jordan are opening. How lucky can you get?
[link]

*****

10.2.02 - One of the things
I dislike most about the Weblog
world is the way bloggers jump on any mention of themselves in the mainstream
media. Gay neocon Andrew Sullivan (whose work always makes
me think, even if what I occasionally think
is, "good lord that's convoluted") is notorious for the speed with
which he responds to the slightest mention of his name in the press.

So I hesitate before commenting on the cheap shots N&O
features columnist Dan Gearino
(left) sent my way in Wednesday's paper, except to note that I've sent the paper
a letter asking for an apology from his editor. The difference between the shots
I've taken at Gearino in the past and his at me yesterday? Mine were grounded
in specific examples of his work. His weren't. That says it all. We'll see if
the paper prints the letter. And Dan, here's the attention you were obviously
gunning for. You owe me one, pal. [link]

*****

10.2.02 - Why hasn't Dan Blue endorsed
Erskine Bowles yet? This Charlotte Observer article lays
out the continuing
spat nicely.It's difficult to see how Bowles can win this
thing without lots of black support, and attitudes like this aren't helping:

Blue's
critics within the party suggested it is odd for him to act as the aggrieved
Democrat, given that he spent months bashing Bowles as an elitist who is insensitive
to working-class issues, while Bowles consistently complimented Blue and Marshall
on the campaign trail.

Oh, come on. "Bashing?" This campaign "wasn't especially
bitter," the N&O reported on Sept. 17. Sure, both Marshall
and Blue attacked Bowles as a wealthy corporate Democrat, but that's because
Bowles, um, is a wealthy
corporate Democrat. Not that there's anything wrong with that; I'm sure
Dan Blue would've loved to have been able to loan his campaign $1.3 million,
like Bowles did in August.

It's not hard to imagine why a man who's been working
in state political trenches since 1980 might still be miffed that the national
party machinery (and money) stepped in to quickly anoint a businessman who's
never been elected to public office. With the editor of Raleigh's black newspaper
claiming he's heard black voters say, "I lived through 30 years of Jesse
Helms, I can do another six under Elizabeth Dole," the fact that Blue still
hasn't endorsed Bowles is a red flag that doesn't bode well for black voter
turnout. [link]

*****

10.1.02 - Huntin' for Nascar-Lovin',
Moon-Pie-Eatin', Bluegrass-Listenin', Shotgun-Totin' Democrats You
have to see this hilariously
revealing NY Times Magazine story about the new "rural white
males" strategy that some Democrats - including John Edwards - are using
in their campaigns. The idea is that Democrats, who once ruled "the back
roads and general stores," now have a "wuss problem" because
they're "seen in much of the country as disconnected from - if not contemptuous
of - the people who spend their weekends hunting, at church or watching stock
cars."

One analyst in the Times
article dismisses the idea completely ("If the Democratic Party thinks
its future lies with rural white males, they're crazy") but our junior
Senator obviously believes he can milk the tactic (until he gets the nomination,
anyway); he's hired the two hottest "NASCAR Democrat" strategists
to manage his presidential campaign. They were responsible for his appearance
at - are you ready? - O
Cooter Where Art Thou?, a fundraiser to help former Dukes of Hazzard actor
Ben Jones
run for Congress in Virginia. Edwards was the guest star - listed just above
Deputy Cletus, it should be
noted - and now also has his own stock car (right) and a bluegrass
group as his official musical act. He'll probably have the sense to stop
before campaigning
with the Confederate battle flag, but, hey, you never know.

Don't dismiss this stuff, though.
For one thing, Cooter's maverick
approach to guns sounds like it could actually work to pry some firearms
fans loose from the Republican party. He's a staunch defender of the 2nd Amendment
(and with Ashcroft
around, who isn't?) but also has the guts to really go after the NRA with statements
like, "Bring it on, Chuck, bring it on. You would be surprised at how many
people are sick and tired of your outfit."

9.30.02 - Oh, for a world in which
Erskine Bowles is running TV ads about this:Agency disavows
report on Iraq arms - The International Atomic Energy Agency says that
a report cited by President Bush as evidence that Iraq in 1998 was "six
months away" from developing a nuclear weapon does not exist."There's never been a report like that issued from this agency,"
Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA's chief spokesman, said yesterday. [emphasis
added]

That, my friends, is called a "gimmie" - the latest
from an administration that apparently feels free to just make up flimsy
justifications for sending our friends and family members to die in Iraq. Any
Democrat strategist with a few guts should be able to turn this stuff into a
good TV ad and aim it at voters who, now that you ask, would kind of
prefer not to ship yet another batch of American soldiers to a violent, desolate
place where they will get shot at for what looks like years to come. And yet
Bowles' Iraq position is almost exactly the same as Dole's. Why is that?

“The Democrats are, for the most part, running
with their tails between their legs,” said Scott Lynch, communications
director at Peace Action...“If the Democrats got out in front of this
and offered some real leadership,” Lynch said, “then they would
actually reach” the majority of voters who do not support invading Iraq
without international support.

I'm sure Bowles' conservative Democrat marketing team thinks that's
a horribly naive view. But what was that line about the people leading and the
leaders following? Better catch
up, Erskine. Not much time left to excite the voters you need to excite.
[link]

9.30.02 - Why, no, as a matter of fact, I don't plan to
fly any time soon A
federal "No Fly" list, intended to keep terrorists from boarding planes,
is snaring peace activists at San Francisco International and other U.S.
airports, triggering complaints that civil liberties are being trampled...Several
federal agencies - including the CIA, FBI, INS and State Department - contribute
names to the list. But no one at those agencies could say who is responsible
for managing the list or who can remove names of people who have been cleared
by authorities.

Paging Tom Ridge to the white courtesy phone. If the Office of
Homeland Security can't even tell us something as basic as who's responsible
for coordinating a list that singles out Catholic
nuns for airport harassment - or how citizens who've been wrongly targeted
can clear their names - then what on earth is it doing? [link]

*****

9.27.02 - Raleigh's red-light recipe for disaster
Uh-oh. Major warning signal in yesterday's N&O as Raleigh's Law
and Public Safety Committee decides not to give the city's lucrative
red-light camera contract to the company that offered the lowest bid. "I
think something funny is going on," said one citizen, in the understatement
of the week. The company that got the nod is Affiliated Computer Services, which
(along with McLaurin Parking) already handles Raleigh's privatized parking enforcement.

Red-light cameras are a huge money generator - for cities, sure,
but even more so for the private companies that insist on getting a cut from
each ticket. Chapel Hill is considering a contract that would hand 70% of each
ticket to ACS. Seventy percent. This despite evidence that
lengthening the duration of yellow lights by as little as one second can
be just as effective, if not more so, in reducing accidents at problem intersections.
Check this San Diego
police report (pdf), for instance:

...between 70 and 82 percent of all red light violations happen
in less than 1.5 seconds after the yellow signal indication. Longer yellow change
intervals serve to reduce red light violations and the potential that they introduce
for collisions...The most significant change in the number of violations occurred
at the intersection of Mission Bay Drive and Grand (1541) where the yellow change
interval was extended from 3.1 seconds to 4.7 seconds. This change resulted
in an 88-percent decrease in the number of violations.

Extending yellow light times doesn't rake in any cash, though.

Red-light cameras are a scam. Three months into its contract with
ACS, Hawaii repealed
the law creating its red-light camera program. In response, ACS is allegedly
demanding a $5 to 8 million penalty. Raleigh's decision to use ACS - against
the recommendation of its own staff - is a setup for a similar disaster
here. The full council will discuss the contract on October 1st. See you there.
[link]

*****

9.27.02 - The
almost unbelievably ignorant Franklin Graham
spews out some whoppers about Islam in this Asheville
Citizen Times interview. Here's my fave: "We in the west have never
experienced this kind of behavior, have never seen this before, where religion
is driving people to mass murder, where religion is killing innocent people."

Within this Temple, about ten thousand were beheaded. If you
had been there your feet would have been stained up to the ankles with the blood
of the slain. What more shall I tell? Not one of them was allowed to live. They
did not spare the women and children.

The level of ignorance Graham displays throughout the interview
is truly stunning. His broad generalizations about a complex religious tradition
would have him hounded off the public stage if he were talking about Christianity.
"You cannot name one nation that has an Islamic majority where there is
religious freedom," he says, as if that proves Islam is inherently intolerant.
But as anyone who's studied Muslim history in the slightest can tell you, at
its height Islamic
culture was extraordinarily tolerant of other religions - certainly much
more so than fundamentalist Christian Europe. According to Sussan Babaie, a
scholar of Islamic art and architecture at the University of Michigan, "there
were highly sophisticated, extremely tolerant centers of poetry, the arts, philosophy
and science in the Muslim world...When Jews were expelled from Spain in the
15th Century, their survival was thanks to Ottoman protection."

Despite what preachers like Graham continue to insist, Islam is
obviously capable of the same heights of beauty
(and depths of depravity) as Christianity. It certainly contains more than enough
seeds for another enlightened age. The signs
are everywhere, even if religious zealots in the U.S. are too frightened to
see them. [link]

A spokesperson told the Associated Press that Valdes
wasn't technically denied a visa; he just failed to complete things in time.
But it's hard not to see this episode in light of the long history of the absurd
U.S. embargo of Cuba - an embargo which has always extended to artists. It even
goes so far as to deny
Cuban composers copyright fees if their music is broadcast or sold in the
United States:

58. The embargo policy also violates the inalienable right
of the peoples of Cuba and the United States to maintain sustained and unrestricted
cultural exchanges. Cuban artists have been systematically denied entry visas
into the United States of America despite the fact that they were invited by
prestigious United States institutions. Cuban artists and composers cannot be
paid copyright fees for the playing, broadcasting and marketing of their music
in the United States and other countries as a result of the extraterritorial
application of the embargo, which violates internationally recognized norms
on the protection of intellectual property.

9.26.02 - Apple Computer's
"Hot News" section has an interesting article
about Wake's City/County Bureau of Investigation, which made the switch
to Macintosh digital film processing in 2001. Apple wants the world to know
that CCBI forensic photographer Gary Knight overcame prosecutors' worries about
digital manipulation of evidence and has cleared out what used to be a backlog
of undeveloped crime scene photos. [link][thanks to Mike]

*****

9.25.02 - Run, Johnny,
Run - It's a few days old, but be sure to read this fascinating N&O
story about a fundraiser
for Sen. John Edwards in Pinehurst last Saturday. The event featured a Hootie
& the Blowfish performance enjoyed by Edwards, Raleigh entertainment lawyer
Richard "Gus" Gusler,
Attorney General Roy Cooper, Treasurer Richard Moore, Elaine Marshall, Mel Watt
and 120 other movers and shakers. The most notable guest, however, was Louisiana
Senator John Breaux, whose presence goes a long way toward explaining Edwards'
centrist Southern strategy for President. Here's a February
2001 profile of Breaux from the New Republic that nails him nicely:

Don't let the adolescent dick jokes fool you. This man is
widely expected to be a key power broker in the 107th Congress. A conservative
Southern Democrat with friends on both sides of the aisle, Breaux is considered
perfectly poised to serve as the go-to guy for a Republican president in need
of bipartisan support to move his agenda through a 50-50 Senate...His positions
- pro-life, pro-gun, pro-big oil - are often closer to Dick Cheney's than to
Dick Gephardt's...Breaux has made a career of positioning himself as the voice
of the pragmatic, rational center on a variety of high-profile policy disputes--Medicare,
Social Security, tobacco, tax cuts. He is forever railing against ideological
rigidity, and he talks of political compromise as if it were a holy sacrament.

It seems obvious that Edwards' "liberal" label will
become increasingly humorous as the 2004 presidential campaign wears - and I
do mean wears - on. [link]

*****

9.25.02
- Edwards' rightward tilt leaves the left end of the Democrat spectrum open
to Al Gore, who this week positioned himself as the candidate most
opposed to Cheney's war. Yeah, sure. Some anti-war liberals - starved
for any crumb from the national Democrat table - are taking Gore's recent speech
to mean he's opposed to an invasion of Iraq. They
need to get a grip. The full
transcript makes it painfully obvious that Gore buys the "regime change"
line completely. He just wants to couch the attack in ways that don't appear
to violate the terms of international law. Talk about a distinction without
a difference.

It's all politics, of course. If Gore wins
the nomination before a U.S. invasion, he'll wind up back where
he was last February - namely, complaining about leaving the 1991 war unfinished
and saying we have to "get it right" this time. Still, the climate
in the media - but not the country - is so insanely pro-war that Gore's speech
counts as political courage in talking head circles. He's certainly sparked
other dormant Dems to wake from their slumber and act on what are supposed to
be the party's convictions.. Gore's rhetoric, including sharp jabs at the Cheney
administration's trampling of the Constitution, is certainly a helluva lot more
courageous than Edwards' recent
speech on the subject of war. [link]

Seems to me the second question is as fair as the first. Does
the massive play local media outlets give to stories like this make them a part
of the problem? With police helicopters already on top of things, how much did
constant shadowing by WRAL's Sky 5 helicopter contribute to the tension? I can't
help but wonder what local police spokespeople have to say about that. I'll
make the call Wednesday.

9.24.02 - It wasn't local enough to get reported in our
mainstream press, but workers in the Triangle's Whole Foods grocery
stores will surely feel the effects of a
recent vote to join a union by their fellow workers in Madison, Wisconsin.
If you have a friend or family member working at Whole Foods (and who doesn't?),
you already know the company has lately become much less tolerant of difference.
Dyed hair and visible piercings apparently now interfere
with "brand consistency" or something. A feel-good lefty company
can't handle workers with purple hair? Whatever. More important than piercings,
however, are the allegations of unusually low pay at Whole Foods compared to
the rest of the grocery industry. Things apparently got bad enough in Madison
that workers got organized -
and won. This has "national significance," says the head of the Wisconsin
AFL-CIO:

"The Madison workers have contacts in most of the other
Whole Foods stores, and so it's very likely that serious organizing campaigns
will be in a lot more stores all over the country...Most workers at the Madison
store are in their early to mid-twenties...This organizing drive is a model
for a resurgent labor movement."

Well, one grocery store does not quite "a resurgent labor
movement" make, but labor gets so few wins these days we'll forgive the
overstatement. And it is true that the vote was a first for the biggest natural
foods company in the U.S., which must have infuriated CEO John Mackey, a libertarian
and "new
age capitalist" who once compared a company with unions to
a person with herpes.

Oops. Looks like he just got infected.

Accusations
that Whole Foods doesn't walk its liberal talk have dogged the company
since it began gobbling up smaller chains - including the Triangle's Wellspring
Grocery - over a decade ago, and have continued as the company grew from 43
stores in 1996 to 134 stores today. One summary of the complaints from a few
years back even quotes
Chapel Hill workers on low pay and morale. The spat between Whole Foods
and the environmental group Earth Island over shrimp fishing methods that kill
sea turtles (right) is also instructive. Whole Foods defends its decision to
not certify its shrimp fishing as "turtle safe" by invoking something
called Ocean
Trust. Earth Island, however, claims Ocean Trust is a "faux-green group"
run by a former lobbyist for the seafood packers industry, and says Whole Foods
is simply "greenwashing"
its complicity in the killing of sea turtles to protect its shrimp profits.
Decide for yourself, I guess, but I find the Earth Island case more convincing.

It's not like there are tons of other places I can go in the Triangle
for a wide selection of organic produce, including (mmmm) organic bananas, so
I won't stop buying at Whole Foods just yet. But I will start asking more questions
of my friends who work there, and waiting to see if any locals run with the
ball those workers in Madison have just tossed into the air. [link]

[thanks to the Triangle Free Press for reprinting
the Progressive article]

Americans grasp the public health importance of abstinence-plus
education without difficulty. According to a SIECUS poll, 93% of us support
comprehensive sex education in high schools; 84% of us support it in middle
schools. A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation demonstrated that only
one percent to five percent of parents remove their children from comprehensive
sexuality education classes.

So why is anyone still listening to Wake County fundamentalists
with a track record of providing medically inaccurate information to local students?
It boggles the mind, really.

After the state made "abstinence-only" the default school
curriculum in 1995, Orange and Durham schools went through the required public
hearing process to put into place a more honest "comprehensive" curriculum,
which some have smartly begun to call "abstinence-plus." The
current Surgeon General endorses just such an approach, suggesting that
educators stress the value of abstinence and "assure awareness
of optimal protection from sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancy,
for those who are sexually active, while also stressing that there are no infallible
methods of protection, except abstinence, and that condoms cannot protect against
some forms of STDs."

That mix is exactly what the fundamentalists don't want
to see in Wake County. Unfortunately, they've been very effective in packing
meetings and burying any attempt to hold a public hearing. Until now, that is.
A town meeting may be held as early as Oct. 17. The always-accessible
Wake County School Board would vote Nov. 19. [link]

*****

9.23.02
- It sometimes amazes me how much of the best Triangle nightlife is
the work of just a few dedicated people. Like DJ Marco, whose Honey
Machine GoGo Internacionale is happening tonight at Henry's Bistro in Chapel
Hill:

Marco is longtime local musician Mark Weddington, who's been busy
creating a network of regular groove and funk nights across the Triangle. If
60's loungecore doesn't do it for you, the
Solid! nights at Ringside in Durham and Kings in Raleigh pour on the Latin,
funk and soul. I've never had a bad time at one of Marco's parties. [link]

The calendars, based on a
similar effort in Colorado, are the work of the very glamorous
Rachel Mills (above), who's thrown
her hat - along with a few other pieces of apparel - into the ring for NC House
District 31. Mills works at one of those companies embroiled
in scandal, don't you know; she recently got a call from Playboy
asking her to pose nude for a Women
of WorldCom spread. Mills seriously considered it, but she and party leader
Sean Haugh ultimately decided against using naked erotica as a campaign strategy.
The state's media mourn the loss.

I'm sure I'm not the only one hoping the soft-core porn trend
spreads. Imagine Russell Capps reclined upon a chaise lounge, his robe seductively
arranged as he explains to voters why North Carolina has a right to ban oral
sex between consenting adults. Or Ellie Kinnaird in a pair of Daisy
Dukes and a knotted shirt, setting out her plan for getting that cigarette
tax past mean ol' Boss Tobacco. Think of it - we'd actually look forward
to election season. If politicians have to fill the airwaves with puppies-and-cream
pablum and hateful lies, the least they can do is flash us some skin every once
in a while.

I give the country another eight years, tops, before we start
seeing seductive shots of half-naked, underwear-clad models in televised political
ads. On second
thought, make it seven. [link]

[thanks to Jerry for this one]

*****

9.20.02 - Ok, you tell me if this
doesn't sound weird: There's a trial going on right now in Durham,
according to the Herald-Sun, in which DNA
samples taken from a man accused of rape don't match DNA samples taken from
inside the victim. This unusual fact has not stopped the Durham District
Attorney's office from prosecuting the man, whose name is Leon Brown. Brown's
defense lawyer, Douglas Simons, claimed in his opening statement that there
was incriminating evidence against someone else - the victim's cousin:

[Simons] told jurors that Brown voluntarily gave DNA samples that did not
match samples from the victim. Nor did pubic hairs surrendered by Brown match...In
addition, the victim initially told authorities that she thought her white cousin
was the intruder, according to Simons. When the cousin was arrested, duct tape
and other incriminating items were found in his car and on his property...District
Attorney Jim Hardin Jr. gave the cousin "complete immunity" to testify
against Brown, Simons told jurors. "He wanted a deal," Simons
said of the cousin. "He got it."

Defense attorneys say all kinds of things, of course - only some
of them true - so we have to be careful here. But let's see if we have this
right: The white cousin who was initially fingered by the rape victim strikes
a deal for immunity with the D.A. in order to testify against a black guy whose
DNA doesn't match the DNA found inside the victim? Is that really what
this article is telling us? It's difficult to understand why the guy being charged
with rape is apparently not the one whose semen was found inside the
victim. Prosecutor Tracey Cline told the jury that her evidence will be sufficient
to convince them that Brown was the rapist. We'll see if they agree; the trial
is expected to end this week. [link]

Everyone knows the most famous folks associated with Black Mountain
- John Cage, Buckminster Fuller, Josef Albers, etc - but not many know about
the most famous unknown
artist in the world, Ray Johnson. He perfected the do-it-yourself dissection
of pop culture - taken for granted today as "punk" - throughout the
1940's and 50's. One of my fave poets, Denise
Levertov, was also part of the Black Mountain crowd, along with Robert Creeley,
Charles Olson and the rest. And the college played host to tons
of othervery
cool and much
less famous lights. So much for Friday, eh? [link]

*****

9.19.02 - Right-wing arguments
against a war with Iraq Now that our "liberal" Senator John
Edwards has come out
in favor of sending Americans to die in Iraq - that is, in favor of setting
the wretched international precedent of allowing a group of countries to take
over another country's government in a preemptive strike - it's clear that most
national Democrats will be useless against Cheney's war. So, just in case Cheney
really is as greedy for oil money as his business dealings with Iraq
make him out to be, and just in case his shrieking for blood isn't simply meant
to distract us from the stench of corruption emanating from the White House,
you might want to have handy a few compelling
free market arguments against war from the Cato Institute. The capitalist
think tank's Top Ten Reasons
not to "Do" Iraq is a good place to start. Family members who
listen to Rush Limbaugh will
thank you. [link]

Most folks know Clark was the leader of a raunchy Chapel Hill
party band that many around here consider legendary, and that the well-liked
Triangle native passed away Monday from an "extended illness" (strangely,
none of the local papers specify what it was). The Herald-Sun's
obit skirts the raunch factor by coyly alerting us that some of the band's
songs "were a bit risqué." Yeah, and Jim Black and Mike Easley
were "a bit disappointed" they didn't get their lottery referendum.
"She sucks on Everybody But Me," "He's Got the Whole World By
the Balls" and "Old Saint Nick whipping his dick" aren't "a
bit" anything. The Thinking Man's Guide paints a more accurate picture
with lots of juicy details about the Hot Nuts' 1961-1969 output. Scroll down
for the 1990 Playboy Network appearance--apparently filmed at He's Not Here--at
the height of the Two Live Crew craze.

No surprise the Chapel
Hill News
does a nice job on Clark's life. The N&O (which owns the News
but apparently felt the need for separate stories) adds to the fun with quotes
from local District Attorney Carl Fox--his sister sneaked Hot Nuts albums
into the house--and Town Manager Cal Horton, who says, "Of course now,
all of it looks very mild, in retrospect." Well, I'm not sure making records
about Santa Claus playing with himself qualifies as "mild" these days,
but we'll let that slide in exchange for the image of two of Chapel Hill's top
authority figures partying down to "Baby Let Me Bang Your Box."

Detour: The Hot Nuts took their name from a 1936 recording
by Lil
Johnson, whose bio at All Music was written by Greensboro's own mad musician
Eugene Chadbourne,
who happens to be scheduled with avant-garde percussionist Gerry
Hemingway at Carrboro's Go! Studios on Wed, Oct. 2nd. How's that for a segue?
[link]

*****

9.19.02 - What to do on Thursday
nights in Raleigh Matt Routh, aka DJ.exe, is back from Amsterdam with
a load of new records to spin at the free Jazz
Anew nights he hosts at Humble Pie. As word slowly spreads, this weekly
is turning into one of the friendliest club nights in Raleigh. Routh (who's
a friend, if that matters) described the crowd as "radically inclusive"
in this nice round-up
of the Triangle's current electronica scene in last week's Indy,
which also mentions the budding TriangleFutureMusic
message board for local producers and DJs. [link]

*****

9.18.02 - No lottery referendum
for North Carolina this year. This is rather amazing. I was
beginning to think the gambling
industry was actually going to pull it off.

I've never liked the moral arguments against legalized gambling,
from the left or the right. Sorry, but anything that puts me in bed
with the folks who produced this
illogical and bigoted argument against equality is immediately suspect.
But you can't convince me that North Carolina should be in the business of convincing
its citizens to play a sucker's game. Nor can you convince me that seeing this
state flooded with hilariously stupid government-sponsored gimmicks like the
Georgia Lottery Change Game Coins
(above) would be a good thing. Just look at those people.*Shudder*
[link]

They get their tentacles into certain members of the House
and the Senate, and they ending up owning, I mean owning, some of your political
machine. And I mean that in the most corrupt way. I saw it in South Carolina.
If I hadn't taken them on when I did they would have been forever in our state.

Every state has to make up its own mind what to do...But if
you want to look at the South Carolina experience, we tried to regulate them,
and they were unregulatable.

Tell it to North Carolina's sheriffs. Although NC law prohibits
machines from making cash payouts, it's a breeze to get around that, especially
when the machines are easily hidden from the few cops who have time to examine
them.

9.19.02 - The Herald-Sun (or Chapel Hill Herald, depending on where
you pick it up) ran another story about the deer
problem in Fearrington Village today. Discussion about what to do with the
rats on stilts (above)
has apparently generated tons of traffic at the local Homeowners Association
site, but don't bother to go since
you not only have to be a resident of FV to post, you have to be a resident
just to read it. Yeesh. Talk about your gated communities. Join the
Triangle, Fearrington.

We were letting our deer herd grow until society let us know when it was
time to start stabilizing, We really didn't have a goal in mind...Both hunters
and non-hunters wanted to see more deer. Was it a mistake to wait until we were
over a million? We don't really have a clue. It's just a judgement call, really.

Now that deer are eating the pansies of wealthy voters and occasionally goring
someone out of sex-crazed fear, the judgement now seems to be "get them
the fuck out of here." And gun-shy suburbanites may not want to hear it,
but controlled hunting by police may actually be one of the more sensible solutions
available at the local level. [link]

*****

Ok, that's enough for now. I won't be writing this much each day, I assure
you. More features, including rules for the NC Spin drinking game (anxiously
awaited by thousands, I'm sure) will appear with truly stunning speed.